


interstates

by Munks



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Brief Sexual Content, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Mental Illness, Post-Canon, Road Trip, Unconventional Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-11 17:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19931536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Munks/pseuds/Munks
Summary: 15. Most lightning strikes will die out before they can burn down a forest. (1 point)A) TrueB) FalseC) Chloe is the lightning strikeD) Rachel is the lightning strikeE) None of the above; the lightning strike is figurative and everything burns in the end, regardless





	interstates

**Author's Note:**

> anyways *writes my weird niche shit*

The sky is softening now. Bruising along the edges so slowly, so smoothly, that Max can’t help but wonder why people only talk about the calm before the storm, not after. Above, the endless evening bleeds from a timid blue to a deep, wounded indigo. Red and pink line the horizon, fading slowly with tilt of the earth.

It’s getting dark now. Makes Max feel like she can’t hear anything properly—one sense dulled, all of them dulled, she supposes.

On the other end of the line, her mother repeats a question.

“No.” Max says, sounding very, very far away. “No.” She repeats, this time stronger and more to herself than to her worried parents on the other end. She wills herself to focus, holds the receiver so close to her face that the pressure starts to make her ear feel hot. The fluorescent light of the telephone booth buzzes overhead.

Just beyond them is the freeway, trailing lines of red and white whipping past at one-hundred kilometres per hour. The curious buzz of motorists rushing home, or rushing away, or maybe rushing through, just before the day’s end.

“Mom, I told you. I lost my phone in the st—” Her mother’s voice interjects briefly on the other end of the line. “In the _storm_. In the storm. I lost my phone in the storm, mom.” Max echoes, once, twice. A hollow mantra. A distant ringing of the not-so-distant past.

She wraps the phone cord around her hand. The metal feels cold and sterile despite the muggy summer heat. Above, the light flickers, moths and flies drawn to the brightness and bobbing lazily overhead.

Her mother says something. Max isn’t paying attention. Her mother says something again. Max’s eyes look out past the graffiti on the phone booth windows. Her gaze is not quite focused but still manages to pinpoint Chloe, pressed against the side of her truck. She’s smoking a cigarette—doesn’t look up, doesn’t even notice Max’s eyes on her, but Max feels a tiny, tense part of herself unwind like a knot being pulled loose. The gentle ebb of relief that comes when she sees that Chloe is still there.

“ _Mom_.” Max says, cutting her mother off mid-sentence. Later, she will feel bad about it but for now she feels too far removed from everything to even notice. Her head hurts. Her tongue feels thick and heavy in her mouth, taking up too much room for any words to fit properly. “Mom, it’s just… Us. It’s just me and Chloe. No one else. Listen—” An automated female voice cuts Max off— _you have thirty seconds remaining_ —and Max takes in a steadying breath.

“Mom, I gotta go, I don’t have any more change. Listen, we’ll be in Seattle in a few days—maybe a week. I’ll call if anything happens.” Her breath hitches, words falling faster, rushed and blurred at the edges. “I love you mom. And dad. I love you guys so much—I gotta go, but I love you, okay? We’ll be safe. See you soon, bye—” The call cuts out, just as her mother’s voice begins to crack on the other end of the line.

Max stands there for a few seconds, fluorescent white lights overhead, cigarette butts littered underfoot. She presses her forehead to the cool metal of the payphone and hopes it will help numb the pounding in her head.

Time slows, stutters to a halt. Everything feels stuck in place, as if the moths overhead have stopped mid-flight. It’s only an eternity later when Max sits up to hinge the phone does the motion return.

She exits the phone booth. Chloe, half bent over from exhaustion, slowly drags her eyes up from the spot on the gravel she’s fixated on. When she notices Max approaching she straightens up, suddenly taut and rigid as if all the bones in her body are snapped into alignment at once.

“Okay?” She asks.

“Okay.” Max says. Her heels click on the gravel. Somewhere off in the distance a car honks.

She rounds the side of Chloe’s truck, slips into the passenger seat. Chloe takes a final drag of the cigarette pinched between her thumb and forefinger and drops it on the ground, crushing the ember as she goes.

She slides in next to Max and turns on the ignition. Her truck sputters, loud and unsettling, waking up the neighbourhood. A dog begins to bark. They peel out from the outskirts of the suburb and head west, the sun sinking ahead of them. Blue moon rising.

Chloe shifts gears, easing off the clutch as she merges onto the freeway. Her hand curls around the gear stick and she doesn’t bother to signal left as she enters the vacant highway lane. Her engine rumbles, louder than the torrential thundering in Max’s head. Max—she just sighs, presses her forehead to her knees and wishes she could fall asleep.

In the rearview mirror, all the little houses slip from the horizon, one by one. Neither Max nor Chloe turn to speak as the truck twists along the supple curves of the empty highway road.

Outside, the night is very quiet.

* * *

Max wakes up too fast from a dream of bodies ripping under gale force winds. She blinks awake, disoriented, sweaty. The motel clock blinks back at her. Neon red. 04:07.

When she rolls over, Chloe’s side of the bed is empty. For one awful moment, Max’s heart stops dead in her chest. All the air floats up to the top of the room and disappears, and for a dizzying second Max thinks she might blink and wake up in Mr. Jefferson’s classroom all over again. Worries that this has all been a dream or a nightmare or a time loop that’s bound to reset—that Max will have to relive that same week over and over and over again until, finally, she just let’s Chloe die.

Because... that’s what caused this, right? Isn’t that what this all means? It’s just the universe collecting its dues. Just the universe, just the universe. The thought weighs heavy on Max’s mind.

It’s amazing how quickly she spirals out of control, after that; the possibilities, literally endless, overwhelm Max as quickly as she can imagine them. Her brain rolls from a sleep-addled numbness to a panicked, hammer-heart state in mere seconds. Her breath stutters; skips over itself and comes out as a little hiccup, tight and shallow. The bedsheets grow damp between her clenched fists. Still, nothing happens.

04:08. The clock ticks forward in the steady march of time.

Outside, Chloe sits on the curb of their motel room and smokes a cigarette. The door opens behind her and she looks over her shoulder, mid-exhale, watching as Max crawls out of their room looking tired and overwhelmed and too wide-eyed for four in the morning.

Max presses up against Chloe’s back. Warm, close, too exhausted to be embarrassed by her neediness. Folds herself over all the bumps and grooves of Chloe’s body and wraps her arms around her, squeezing so hard she can hear one of Chloe’s joints pop.

Out in the motel parking lot a street lamp buzzes. Some of the trees shake with early morning wind, but everything else around them is still. Silent. Chloe flicks her finished cigarette and crushes it under the sole of her shoe. One of her hands, tentative, cold from the brisk October air, touches the pocked skin of Max’s arm.

“You okay?” She asks. Her voice is gravelly from the smoke or the exhaustion or maybe, Max thinks, it’s just like that now. Maybe it’ll keep that low, rough texture to it. A consequence of the past. A verbal marking, permanent as a scar.

Max doesn’t emote. She keeps her head pressed into the divot of Chloe’s neck. “Can’t sleep?” Chloe tries instead, reaching into her breast pocket for her pack of cigarettes. Max nods her head. “Me neither.” Chloe says, flicking her lighter.

And there they sit, just like that. Two people stuck in time. Living, breathing photographs.

Eventually Max’s knees begin to ache, pieces of cement and gravel picking into flesh and bone. Chloe lifts up a corner of the blanket draped over her shoulders and Max crawls in beside her. Presses in close. Side by side. Alone, together.

Chloe smokes her cigarette and a small, silly part of Max thinks about asking for one herself. Instead, she picks at a blue string unravelling from the hem of the blanket. Her head presses to the sharp slope of Chloe’s shoulder, cheek hot where it moulds against the peak of Chloe’s collarbone. She can’t help but imagine that in another universe, the blanket is probably a different colour. That, amongst the millions of billions of mind-numbingly vast possibilities, things probably didn’t turn out like this.

In another universe, Max thinks, the blanket is red and Chloe died in that car crash with William all those years ago. In that universe, Chloe’s head shattered the windshield, broke her bones like peanut brittle. Two lives broadstroked across the tarmac in brilliant shades of red. Max always told her to wear a seatbelt.

In a different universe the blanket is pink and Max sees Chloe in passing and forgets about her soon after. In that universe, there are no consequences and nothing happens. Max grows up and gets married: two dogs, no kids. She dies at the tender age of eighty-four from pulmonary edema in the comfort of her own home and no one still living is particularly sad when she goes.

And in another universe, somewhere far away in the cosmos, there is no blanket because Max destroyed everyone and everything when she pulled apart spacetime with her bare hands. There is no Chloe, no William. No Rachel Amber or Mark Jefferson. No Warren or Kate. In that universe there is no one, nothing, not even the emptiness that comes from an absence of space.

Max picks at the string until the blanket begins to unravel. Beside her, Chloe lights another cigarette and Max thinks yes, this universe isn’t perfect, but it’s hers and she is thankful.

It isn’t perfect and it never will be but this is the universe where she gets to watch the sun stretch past the horizon and along the motel parking lot, sleepy-eyed and a little cold, with her head pressed against Chloe’s shoulder. This is the universe where Chloe lays her cheek against the crown of Max’s head and this is the universe where Pall Mall cigarette smoke smells something like home. It might not last—something so delicate and finite like this only happens once, only for a little while—but Max is still thankful.

Beyond them, the sun slopes to the sky.

* * *

##  final examination

_Fall 2013 Semester_

## Blackwell academy

#### Examination booklet cannot be torn, mutilated, or removed from the examination room

**Course name:** Language of Photography |  **Course ID:** PHOT233  
---|---  
**Course instructor:** Prof. Mark Jefferson |  **Course section:** A  
  
Name: _______________ | Student ID: _______________ | Date: _______________  
---|---|---  
  
**Additional instructions:** | The examination will consist of defining terms, multiple choice, true or false, fill in the blanks, and short answer questions. Scrap paper is not allowed. Calculators are not allowed. Bilingual dictionaries are allowed with prior permission from the instructor.  
---|---  
  
### PLEASE PRINT LEGIBLY

**Define the following:** ( _2 points each_ )

1\. Blooming

2\. Aperture

3\. Focal length

4\. Colour space

5\. Dark current

6\. Lossless

7\. Lag time

**Multiple choice questions. Please clearly indicate your answer.**

8\. Who is credited with defining film and photography as “little pieces of time”? ( _1 point_ )

A) James Stewart  
B) Diane Arbus  
C) Alfred Hitchcock  
D) Mark Jefferson

9\. Which famous photographic process was first introduced to North America by Robert Cornelius in the mid-1800’s? ( _1 point_ )

A) Daguerreotypy; a process by which a polished sheet of silver-plated copper is exposed to photosensitive chemicals and used as the film, often used in self portraits as “a reflection of the soul.”  
B) Salt prints; in which “sensitive paper” infused with sodium chloride is blotted with silver nitrate to cause a chemical reaction that produces the photosensitive compound silver chloride.  
C) Collodion process; a rapid wet form technique that uses collodion—photographic material is coated, sensitized, exposed, and developed within the span of a few minutes.  
D) Double exposure; colloquially known as spirit photography, in which two or more negative images are superimposed to give the illusion of the presence of past loved ones.

10\. After Arcadia Bay is destroyed by a tornado, Maxine “Max” Caulfield and Chloe Price _______. ( _1 point_ )

A) Run away and fall in love, living happily ever after  
B) Decide they are both two different people needing two different things and part ways amicably  
C) Are left to deal with the shattered remains of their past and the consequences of their decisions  
D) None of the above; Arcadia Bay is never destroyed by a tornado and Max Caulfield is alone

* * *

Sunday afternoon and the restaurant is completely empty. Not a single soul passing it on the boardwalk, nor seated in the patio’s handful of flimsy plastic tables and little tucked-in chairs.

The town is empty, too. As was every town before it. Barely any cars on the road, no people in passing. Empty, empty, like every soul has been lost at sea. Hundreds of thousands of miles away from Arcadia Bay and yet something about this kind of absence feels familiar. 

Max and Chloe pull up along Main Street and Chloe’s engine rumbles, unsuitably loud for the stillness of the seaside town. On one side of the road, the blurry outline of Chloe’s truck reflects off the window panes of closed storefronts. On the other, a boardwalk stretches farther than the eye can see. A single, lonely diner sitting at its edge.

The ocean is a solid blue line in the distance, tide receding past the horizon. They continue onwards. In passing. Chloe downshifts a gear and her engine backfires, sharp as a gunshot; a flock of startled seagulls bursts past the windshield and flies away. 

Chloe parks her truck next to the boardwalk, a few spots away from the entrance to the diner. Snuffs out the half joint she’s been smoking in the cup holder and tucks it up between the sun visor. 

“I mean,” Max says, stepping out of the truck mid-conversation. “You’re one of the smartest people I know, Chloe. I’m serious, you should at least consider it.” Max pushes strands of sweaty hair past her forehead, cheeks and freckles sunburnt pink as she ties her air up in a short ponytail. She makes a point of keeping eye contact with Chloe across the high windows of the truck as she tightens her hair elastic.

“Nah.” Chloe draws out the vowel, smooth and easy with a trail of smoke. “That shit’s not for me, Mad Max. School’s got too many rules, regulations—” She waves her hand vaguely, shutting the truck door but forgetting to lock it. “I’ve got a thing about authority figures.”

“Oh, I never realized.” Max deadpans. She tucks her hands in her pockets, rounds the truck. “But seriously like, Chloe you could get your G.E.D. And then we could graduate together—and go to the same college, get an apartment. Get a dog. _Dogs_.” And that piques Chloe’s interest. She pauses for a moment, pushes her Aviators to her forehead and considers it. 

Her face does this funny thing when she’s high—where everything she’s thinking flashes through her expression in rapid bursts. Surprise, contemplation, happiness, until it settles on a slight frown. 

She shakes her head. “What am I going to do in a shit pit like college? I don’t even _want_ to study anything, and it’s not like I can afford it.” 

“I know, but…” Max says, losing steam.

Chloe tilts her chin to the diner. “You good with this?” She says, changing the subject. Max frowns. She want to argue more but drops the topic—no point in pushing or else Chloe will shut the idea down completely. 

So instead Max just shrugs. It’s the only restaurant in view. “I’ll eat anything at this point.” She says, walking shoulder to shoulder with Chloe. 

The diner is small with an open face—more of a shack than anything—with a slight overhang at the entrance and a bar counter cutting the building in half. All the seating is outdoors, white plastic and a tray of half-empty condiments on each table. 

Chloe rings the service bell. In the corner of the counter there is a strange statue of an elephant perched on the ledge. It is small and innocuous, not taking up more space than it needs, yet something about it makes Max do a double take. The distance between its eyes, the proportions of its trunk: something is strange about this elephant. Off-kilter. 

She stares at it. Tilts her head a fraction of an inch. Squints. The elephant stares back with its black pebble eyes, almost perceptibly as if its watching.

“What’s up?” Chloe follows Max’s line of sight.

Max shrugs. “I don’t know.” She flicks her chin to the small statue in the corner. “That elephant is just, like… giving me weird vibes.”

“Oh?” Chloe says, moving closer so she can bump their shoulders. “It’s almost like there’s... an elephant in the room?”

“Ugh, no.” Max groans. Fondly exasperated, but can't hide her smile—has the kind that lifts up her entire face. Makes her eyes squint a little, flashes of off-centred teeth peaking past her lips. She’s got one dimple, on the left side. It’s so girlish, so her. Hasn’t changed one bit since they were kids. 

Chloe smiles too, not quite a full one but a slight upturn of her lips. It’s rougher, more tested by time but genuine nonetheless. Makes Max want to reach out and touch her. Trace the shape of it and cement it to memory.

Chloe rings the service bell again. Suddenly, a short, frazzled looking man appears from somewhere in the back and welcomes them. 

He has a strangeness to him, too—just like the elephant and just like the town. He seems jittery as he takes their orders, wide-eyed and clearly distracted. Two burgers, two fries, fifteen-fifty plus tax, please and thank you. Hands them back the incorrect amount of change.

And then the man is gone, disappearing back where he came from behind the swinging kitchen doors. Max blinks. She feels a little stunned, as if some of the strange man’s anxiety has been absorbed into her by proxy. Or maybe it’s the elephant. Or the town. Or maybe it’s just Max, looking for something to be wrong. 

It's not surprising—Max is very sensitive these days. Understandably so. She fluctuates between a total awareness of everyone and everything to a complete and utter oblivity of the world around her. Feels like she’s broken, fractured—like all the pieces inside of her can’t quite seem to arrange themselves in order. Like everything is off. Wrong. Doesn’t quite fit right into place. 

Chloe, however, seems undisturbed by the encounter with the strange man and everything in general. She has an air of nonchalance these days—very _I don’t give a fuck_. And maybe, maybe, if Max didn’t know every twist and turn about Chloe, didn’t know what she came from and where she’s going, she might have believed it. But Max knows her—knows Chloe better than she does herself. And Max knows this aloofness is just a facade, just a consequence of Chloe’s emotional barriers running sky high. Far past the clouds. Up, up and away. 

Still, Chloe just folds her hands behind her head and takes a seat in one of the diner’s chairs, kicking her legs out as she settles in the sunshine. Sometimes it's just that easy to pretend nothing is wrong. 

Max stays behind, hovering in the mouth of the shack. Still in sight but just out of reach. 

She studies the building—it's white strips of baseboard and dull yellow walls. There’s two blackboards screwed to the back wall with the menu and daily specials written in chalk. Max keeps her hands tucked in her pockets and a polite eye turned away from the elephant watching her in the corner. 

The diner’s floor is made from the same sandy planks of wood as the boardwalk, stained with old ketchup and condiments that could never quite be mopped away. There’s a few sporadic pictures hung to take up empty space—black and white photographs that, if Max had to guess, were bought at a department store. 

Overall the restaurant is bland, unassuming. Makes Max feel like she could melt into the walls and no one would ever even notice. (She’s not quite sure if that thought gives her comfort.)

The man behind the counter reappears and calls their orders, unnecessarily loud considering they’re the only customers here. Max’s shoulders jump and she turns to two paper plates, steaming and salty and smelling good enough to remind Max that she hasn’t eaten since breakfast. 

She picks up the plates and thanks the man. Walks back towards Chloe, careful not to drop their fries even as her hands prick with heat. She sits down at the table where Chloe has withdrawn her cigarettes and lighter but leaves them otherwise untouched.

“Aw, Caulfield,” Chloe says, plastering a big grin and leaning back in her chair. The cheap plastic sways; Max stifles the immediate urge to pull Chloe forward. “We’ll make a housewife out of you yet, bringing me my meal and everything.” Chloe teases. Max slides the plate towards her and Chloe’s chairlegs make a loud, unanimous clack as all four land safely back on the ground.

For a second, Max pauses. Just... goes still. As if something inside her short circuits. She replays Chloe’s words a few times in her head, testing the weight of them, and suddenly a very strange emotion grabs hold of Max. 

It unfurls from a tight, tiny corner of her chest, between her rib cage, underneath her spleen. It grows, swells. An emotion so visceral it feels like an organ inside of her: plump and red and pulsating.

She sets her own plate down and grabs Chloe’s hands, startling her. Chloe doesn’t pull away; Max’s grip is tender soft, easily breakable, a little like Chloe herself, and Chloe stares down where their hands connect with comically wide eyes. She’s so expressive, this girl.

“I would literally do anything for you, Chloe.” Max says, swollen with feeling, unsure of where all of this is coming from. “Literally anything, Chloe. You should know that by now.” Max stares with such intensity—feels like she could literally rip the fabric of space and time with all of the emotion welling inside of her. 

Chloe stares back, blinks once. Twice. Tries to laugh it off. “Woah, Mad Max,” She says, body going stiff but not pulling away. “Don’t get too heartfelt on me. It’s just dinner.” 

Max blinks. She comes back to herself at first very slowly and then all at once. 

It takes a moment to unfurl her palms from where they’ve curled around the bony joints of Chloe’s fingers. Takes even longer for her to completely let go. 

Chloe is blushing, bright because she’s awful at hiding it. Brighter because she knows she is. Max thinks she might feel embarrassed too—not enough to blush, but enough to look away.

Chloe distracts herself with a mouthful of food and Max follows in suit. They sit, quietly alone in the restaurant, both of their backs politely turned away from the elephant staring at them from the corner of the room.

* * *

These days when she looks at old photographs, Max finds herself asking: is that person dead? Is she dead? Is he? Sometimes the answer is obvious. Yes, this man mid-fall from the North Tower is dead; yes, this monk on fire is dead. But sometimes not. Sometimes the answer isn’t always clear. Sometimes there is an empty space, uncertainty making a gap for the imagination to fill. And, oh, the horrible things the mind will use to fill those cracks.

Lately Max’s mind seems to burrow deep into those horrible things. The other day she took a photo, glossy black developing slowly into the crisp outline of Chloe smoking, and the first thought that drifted to the top of her mind was: is she dead?

Grief is funny like that. This sudden fixation on death. A reminder. Momento mori. These days Max tends to find herself thinking about it, wondering during the day to day mundane. Not in a morbid sense (or at least, she hopes it isn’t), but something a little more passive. Certainly more detached. 

In the market buying bread, Max finds herself wondering if the baker has ever lost someone. If the cashier could understand this kind of grief. Does the woman in front of her, alone and in line to buy a single bag of granola, understand the emptiness of losing someone? Does this stranger know the hollowness that grief leaves behind?

Perhaps, Max thinks as she hands the cashier money, these people do understand rawness of it all. Perhaps they know what loss means, not just from an outsiders impersonal point of view, but a deep understanding of the visceral feeling that comes with having someone ripped from your life. The empty space where a warm body should be.

She slips the fifty cents into the Children’s Hospital donation jar and tucks the loaf of bread under her arm. Exits the store. The cashier, regardless of his understanding of grief or lack thereof, wishes her well. 

Outside Chloe waits for her in the parking lot, unwrapping the foil off a new pack of cigarettes. Pall Mall reds, king size. Twenty orange filters lined in neat, even rows. She smiles when she sees Max, light and easy. It makes Max’s heart twist in all sorts of odd angles. 

No one else gets it, Max thinks as they walk back to their motel; their hands brush against each other, knuckles grazing with each step but not quite touching. No one, she thinks, will ever really understand how we feel. What we’ve been through. 

No one but us, Max thinks.

No one but us.

* * *

13\. Love is best described as _______. ( _1 point_ )

A) Devotion  
B) Full of arrows  
C) A sacrifice  
D) Tender; kind  
E) Forgiveness

14\. Chloe Price is _______. ( _1 point_ )

A) A bluebird singing in the morning after the storm  
B) A shipwreck  
C) A marble statue, a stone photograph, a testament to the tides of time  
D) Alone; all alone; never not alone  
E) Chloe Price is Chloe Price is Chloe Price is

15\. Most lightning strikes will die out before they can burn down a forest. ( _1 point_ )

A) True  
B) False  
C) Chloe is the lightning strike  
D) Rachel is the lightning strike  
E) None of the above; the lightning strike is figurative and everything burns in the end, regardless

* * *

It happens like this: five days after they leave Arcadia Bay and there’s a news report on the local tv station. 

This, of course, is nothing new. There are news reports on Arcadia everywhere if you look. TV stations, radio shows—the whole continent is lit up with bulletins on the storm that swallowed a town. Politicians use it to rally for votes, religious groups warn of the rapture. Retribution. Judgment Day. It’s always been easy to take advantage of a tragedy.

Max and Chloe are careful not to expose themselves to any of the news coverage. It’s self-protection (because Max isn’t avoiding it, she’s not, she’s _not_ ). They drive with the radio off, leave any restaurants playing the news. Sometimes it’s easier to not get cut than to stitch a wound closed—no need for antiseptic if you never break the skin. 

But this bulletin is different. Accidental, unavoidable. A bartender looking for the sports channel and clicking the news instead. 

And there it is, full screen, HD: a portrait of a man, three-quarter turn, looking up past his glasses to the lens of the camera. His brown hair is slicked back and the neat trim of his beard outlines the square build of his jaw. His photo is plastered next to the talking head of a mousy looking news reporter. She shuffled her papers, the TV is muted. Her mouth opens mid-sentence. 

The screen flashes. A man hits a baseball across the green diamond of a stadium and the crowd erupts from the stands, completely inaudible. Max blinks. Takes a moment for her brain to catch up and process what she just saw and even longer for her to figure out if it’s relevant. 

Beside her, Chloe cracks the shell of a peanut between her teeth. Spits out the pieces and crunches the neat oval of nut she plucks out from inside. She’s watching the game, staring up at the flatscreen of the bar TV with her head cradled in her palm. Bored.

She says something. Max sees her lips move but doesn’t quite catch the words. She says something again, laughs a little at the TV. Her shoulder shake and Max thinks _have they always looked like that?_

Minutes pass. Max, slowly becoming untethered from the Earth's gravity, floating somewhere off near Orion’s Belt, watches Chloe’s lips move. Watches as she looks over and stares at Max. Watches her face pinch into a frown. Max studies it; the arc, the slight curvature in the lines of her lips. The way muted vowels and consonants twist her mouth in to all sorts of odd shapes. Max thinks back to the man on the TV—how did his lips look? What shape did they make? The more she thinks of it, the quicker the mere thought of him yanks Max down from high up in space. The weightlessness suddenly becoming crushing as Max is slammed back down onto the surface of the Earth, one-thousand metres per second squared. 

Reality check. 

Suddenly Max feels dizzy, disoriented. Her heart climbs in her throat. The bar is too bright. Polarizing. Like a set of umbrella lights beaming on her face. It’s too tiny, too much, the walls are closing in—shrunk three inches in the last ten seconds. Her pulse picks up, tipping higher on the scales, higher, higher. Max thinks _when did my breathing get so fast?_

Chloe’s still talking but her sentences have become clipped. Max still can’t hear her but she can guess what Chloe’s saying by the shape of the words. _Max?_ Maybe. _Max?_ It’s like there’s a plastic bag over Max’s head getting tighter with each breath. Duct tape bounding her in place. She feels like a trapped animal and the panic runs electric through her veins. _Max?_

She reaches for her glass but knocks it on the ground. The shatter, muffled, sounds like the click of a camera. And that’s it. That’s enough. Get me out of here, get me out. I need to get the fuck out of here. I need to get away. Get me out, get me out, _I—_

She’s not sure if she’s saying it out loud or if it’s just a scratched record on loop in her head, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Get me out. Her hands are shaking and her breath falls so heavily it feels like it sways her entire body. Like she is nothing but one massive lung mechanically pumping air in and out in rapid succession. 

And then Chloe’s there, guiding her off the stool and towards the door. Her hands are a solid, steady weight on Max’s shoulders. The bartender yells something and Chloe yells back but Max can’t hear, it’s too bright, get me out, I need to, I, I, IIIIIIIII III I III II IIII I

* * *

20\. Rachel in the _______. ( _1 point_ )

A) Dark room  
B) Dark room  
C) Dark room  
D) Dark room  
E) Dark room

* * *

Started late with object permanence. Two years old and Max still has a hard time knowing her dad is still there, even though she can’t see him. Sitting all alone on the carpet of the living room: cry and cry and don’t stop crying even though dad is just on the other side of the door. 

Eighteen years old and Max still sometimes feels like she doesn’t quite get it. Mid-October, cold wind rising. She’s standing outside a gas station, talking to her mom on a payphone. Her hands are chilled and her lips are chapped, dry, cracking around the edges. The only part of her that isn’t cold is where Chloe’s jacket is draped over her fleece. It hurts when the temperatures start to dip this low. The kind of autumn weather makes her feel like her skin is trying to crawl off her body. 

Max curls a ringlet of hair around her white-numb finger and speaks distractedly into the payphone: a few more days, mom. Maybe a week, mom. We’ll be there soon, mom. 

It’s a moonless night—only light is coming from neon signs and the white fluorescence of the gas station windows. One billboard, in the distance, looms high above the blackened freeway. In the darkness it stares at Max in all white, black sans-serif text: DRIVE SAFE.

Inside the gas station Chloe is buying cigarettes. Max can’t see her from here—can’t see much while tethered to the payphone except for crude graffiti and _Hannah ♡ Mark_ carved into the side of the brick wall. 

Max tugs a little at her hair, thinks about the strands growing greasy under her fussiness, follicles breaking off. She keeps glancing at the gas station door, waiting for it to open up in brilliant shades of light as Chloe steps out and into the bitter night air. But the minutes tick by. Still no Chloe. Max’s mother sounds weary of her daughter’s absence on the other end of the phone. 

Part of Max is embarrassed, really. It’s silly she’s starting to get like this, anxious, waiting—every time Chloe is out of sight for just a little too long she feels like the whole world gets shifted off-centre.

Attachment issues, maybe. Shared trauma, more likely. She wonders if Chloe feels the same. 

Max bites her lip. It’s like some terrible part of her is looking for any hint that Chloe’s disappeared. Gone. Just stepped right off the edge of the map. Every time Max blinks she worries she’s slipped into some alternate timeline where Chloe doesn’t exist. How can she be sure that Chloe’s still here? Is she positive that Chloe’s just stuck in line at the gas station? How does Max know she isn’t completely alone? 

It’s silly. Needy. A more clinical part of her brain would toss out words like separation anxiety or codependency, but Max knows. Chloe knows. They know, they know. In the end, it’s only them. 

Max finishes up the phone call with her mom. Says bye to her dad. Scuffs her shoes on the concrete and kicks away stray pebbles and stale cigarette butts. The door of the gas station chimes as Max hangs up the receiver and suddenly there’s Chloe, pressing up behind her. Wrapping her arms around Max’s torso and pushing her face into the dip of Max’s shoulder. Her chest to Max’s back, her thighs to Max’s jeans. 

_Oh,_ Max thinks. _Oh, okay. Okay. Good._ She reaches up and curls her hand around Chloe’s arm. Doesn’t let go. A small, tender piece of herself begins to glow between her ribs. 

Chloe sighs, sagging, and Max’s breath flutters out past her lips, light and airy, moth wings in her throat. All the anxiety begins to leak out of her, pooling at her feet. Tar black and sticky. 

Chloe presses closer. Max leans back. Comfort and security—an extraordinary example of calm and tenderness in an empty lot of an Oregon gas station. 

It’s times like these that Max and Chloe put down the knives. Remove all the blades that point inwards, pull out the arrows and barbs. They’re here, together—they aren’t survivors or killers or Wound Men impaled on swords; right now they are just Max and Chloe, cold but _together_ , standing under an open pit of black sky.

Max leans back, presses her nose Chloe’s hair. She smells like smoke. Like weed. Cigarettes and bonfire, soot and dust. Typical and comforting but underneath it all, after all this time, there’s still the undercurrent of Joyce’s laundry detergent hidden on her skin. Little things like that never quite fade away. 

There’s a certain kind of intimacy, Max thinks, that comes from recognizing scents of your childhood best friend. Remembering their long-passed dogs. Reciting their home phone number off by heart. It’s genuine, deep. Nothing rivals that kind of old love.

And so for a moment they stand there, keeping each other warm. The most basic of human needs compounded by craving for closeness. Eventually Chloe lets go and so does Max but the touch still lingers. Their fingers hook with one another despite their bodies pulling apart and they walk back, hand in hand, to where Chloe’s truck is parked underneath a single flickering light. Unlock the doors, climb into the cab. The engine starts like a roll of thunder. 

Chloe signals out of the gas station and off they go, into the night. The white billboard looms high above in the black Oregon sky. DRIVE SAFE.

In the darkness Max can see the little reflective numbers on Chloe’s dashboard. The RPM gauge climbs as Chloe presses the gas and jumps down as she shifts gears. 

They drive through the stillness of the night, banking on the easy sway of the highway roads. Chloe, tentative, unwilling to look anywhere but straight ahead, reaches out past the gear shift and into the darkness. Curls her hand with Max’s, intertwines them together. Touches her knuckles. The grooves in her palm. Explores her fingers, one by one. 

Maybe, Max thinks as they drive on through the black and starless night, this is love.

* * *

The campground is nestled between the mountains and the sky, quiet and alone. 

The trees are thinner here; less branches, less girth, less height, less dense. It does not make the scenery less beautiful but it does add a sense of smallness to the area, as if everything is compressed. Around them there are shrubs and boulders and rotting logs with small grey mushrooms growing out from between the moss. Pockets of melting snow dot the area. 

Max and Chloe drive up on a gravel road and stop at the campground registration: a tiny cedar building with a red roof and a wooden bear holding a Welcome sign in the front. The air smells very crisp. 

There is no one around to greet them, no campers they can see; just an empty swath of carved away forest filled with nothing but the sound of wind cascading down the mountainside.

The grounds are tilted on a light downward slope that Max can only feel when she steps out of the truck. It’s as if her centre of gravity wobbles off its axis. Disorienting. She imagines that any cylindrical objects dropped on the ground here tend to slowly, slowly roll away. Creeping out of sight and into the bushes or off a ledge, but only when no one is there to watch them disappear. 

Chloe leaves her truck parked out front and they venture into the small building, past the wooden Dutch door with its rusting hinges. Inside here is a woman on a hand-carved rocking chair, knitting next to an unlit fireplace. She looks up, surprised, mid-stitch on her white wool sweater. 

“Oh!” She says. “‘Didn’t hear you come in.” She puts her knitting down, stands from her chair. Her greying afro is pulled back with a paisley bandana, white twists of hair sticking out from the edges. She smiles, all white teeth except for a single canine capped in silver, and introduces herself as the campground’s owner but neglects to give a name. 

The owner is a stout woman, bright-faced and well rounded with age. She is kind, expressive; talks with her hands more than her words. Tells them it’s fifteen bucks a night, per person, per site. Cash only. Bathrooms on the east end, shower just behind that. ‘Don’t get many campers this time of year so tent where you want.

Her words curl with a slight twang—a southern accent that takes Max a moment to place. She listens to it carefully, to the timbre more so than what’s being said, and can’t quite figure out why it sounds so familiar. There’s something about it that itches Max, something that feels a little strange. 

Suddenly her mind pings with a single, innocent thought: Joyce. 

She sounds like Joyce. The lilt of her voice, the way she pronounces _aw_ ’s instead of _ee_ ’s. It’s so characteristic that Max is almost embarrassed she didn’t pick up on it sooner.

And then, again, her mind says _Joyce_. And Max stops. And suddenly she is very still. Her heart begins to pick up pace, beating like a drum to a single syllable: _Joyce, Joyce, Joyce_. Her spine goes stuff, pulled taut and straight as her blood runs cold. Joyce, Joyce, Joyce— the name thunders in her ears. Did you forget about Joyce? Did you forget about what she sounds like, forget about what you did? 

Max opens her mouth to say something, to tell Chloe, to see if she noticed it too, but Max can’t find it in herself to speak. She looks to Chloe, feeling scared and fragile, but Chloe seems oblivious. Doesn’t even notice that the owner sounds exactly like her late mother—or maybe her mind just blocks it out. Another emotional barrier, protective and uncompromising. 

Instead Chloe just thanks the woman, fiddling with her car keys as she heads out the door. Max tries to follow, turns around and tries to walk out the door, but she feels dizzy. Off-kilter. She watches Chloe walk away and disappear, out of sight. Max takes a step to leave, to _follow_. The campground owner's voice echoes in Max’s head, her heart beats in her chest, _Joyce, Joyce, Joyce._

Behind her, the woman speaks. 

“Do you feel any guilt?”

Max stops, mid-step. Not a shiver moves up her spine. Her joints lock in place, a deer on the highway staring headlong at two exceedingly bright headlights. 

“Excuse me?” Max says; her own voice sounds very hollow in her ears. She turns around, the cherry-faced campground owner smiling back at her.

“Sweetheart I said, do you need any quilts?” The owner repeats, prim and sweet as clipped rosebuds. The two bright headlights begin to dim, fading, fading, off into the distance.

“Oh.” Max says, wringing her hands around the worn leather strap of her bag. Her heart is a hammer, threatening to break her ribs. “Oh.” Max says again, suddenly finding her mouth very dry. “No. Thank you.”

* * *

**True or false. Please clearly indicate your answer.** ( _1 point each_ )

31\. Chloe’s life is more important than the thousands of people living in Arcadia Bay. | **T F**  
---|---  
32\. The etymology of the word _victim_ originates from an individual or individuals to be killed as sacrifice. | **T F**  
33\. It is in everyone’s best interest to forget. | **T F**  
34\. It is in everyone’s best interest to forget. | **T F**  
35\. It is in everyone’s best interest to forget.  
  
| **T F**  
  
* * *

Max enters the campground shower room and is relieved to find that it is a single, private enclosure. No uncomfortable communal experiences with nude strangers for Max tonight, thank you. 

But the shower stall is just that: a single stall in the middle of the woods out behind the bathrooms. It is an awkward looking structure with wooden plank walls pocked with moss on all sides, and a single, bulbous blue water heater pressed against one end of the tiny enclosure. No roof. Max grips her towel uneasily and tips her weight from side to side, worrying the balls of her feet. She glances behind her shoulder before following down the neat path of flat stones laid out to the shower. Chloe’s flip-flops, two sizes too big, click with every step she takes.

She thinks of Chloe, briefly. Fleetingly. Wonders if she should bring up the campground owner and the way she spoke with her strange voice but—no. No. What good will that do? What solace will that bring? She’ll only be picking at a wound that’s just barely started to scab. Max briefly scrubs at her face before continuing on ahead.

The shower’s door is latched with a piece of frayed rope. It doesn’t creak like Max expects when she pushes it open and inside she is surprised to find the stall remarkably clean. It looks like a steam room, given the tall wooden walls and a single wooden bench built in to the far side of the stall. A shower head sprouts from the opposite end, with a slightly rusted temperature knob right below it. It’s remarkably bare; a more ostentatious part of Max may have even called it minimalist. 

The door locks from the inside with a small hook latch. Max toes the ground carefully, staying on the shale slabs lining the floor as best as she can. Bright green moss grows along the gaps between the rocks, tiny and delicate.

She places her items on the bench, where parts of the wood beams have rotten, pulls off her shirt and tucks her satchel delicately under a bundle of clothes when something catches her eye.

Across the stall, from the drain, a dozen tiny green plants sprout from the opening of the mouth. Climbing, reaching. 

Max stops, cold and mid-undress, staring at the strange little plants. She blinks. The cogs tick in her head. Then slowly, as if she might startle the foliage, Max withdraws her camera from her covered bag and clicks open the shutter. She kneels to take the shot, her nipples pebbling from the cold. Her skin pocks, fleshy and uncomfortable and sensitive to the mountain air. Strained, too tight. She inhales and presses her eye to the viewfinder. 

Part of Max wants to find meaning in something so small and insignificant. Maybe it’s the plant’s ability to grow and thrive despite the circumstances. Resilience. Renewal. A testimony to every living thing’s ability to begin anew.

Another part of Max is only interested in the aesthetic. She snaps a picture—tiny green leaves, speckled with pearls of water—and hopes the heat and moisture won’t distort the Polaroid too badly. She tucks her camera back in her bag and runs her hands along her chilled biceps. 

She is careful to tread lightly as she turns on the tap.

* * *

“You didn’t set up the tent?” Max says, more confused than accusatory. She walks up to where Chloe is pressed against the side of her truck, the soppy click click click of Chloe’s flip-flops against her feet echoes through the trees. 

Chloe takes a final, definitive inhale of her cigarette. She’s picked up this new habit lately, where she doesn’t crush the finished butt underfoot but instead only pinches off the ember right before it burns to the filter. She does so now and it lands on the ground, small and bright and decidedly more fragile than anything that dangerous has the right to be. Then she steps on it, grinds the smouldering fragments of tobacco with the heel of her boot and pockets the remaining butt. She usually remembers to throw them away later, and the environmentalist in Max is genuinely delighted with this new habit of not littering, but Chloe reeks something awful these days. Practically a walking ashtray with all those old cigarette butts stuffed in her pockets. 

Max towels off the rest of her hair, ignores the smell of cigarettes in favour of the cool blue cedar breeze. Chloe pushes herself off of the side of her truck and reaches out for Max’s hand. Max blinks, loops her towel around her neck and takes Chloe’s palm in hers. She lets Chloe guide her, of course. Of course. She’ll go anywhere Chloe goes. 

And where Chloe wants to go is the back of her truck, where she’s laid out their pillows, all their sleeping bags, spare blankets: fleece and wool and red-checkered plaid all folded together in a cozy looking nest. 

“ _Tada_ —” Chloe drops Max’s hand and strikes a not-quite-dramatic pose. Likely dulled down in an attempt to still come off as cool, Max thinks, maybe ironic. “I call it _Casa Caulfield._ ” Chloe says. 

She hefts herself up onto the bed of the truck and bends down to offer Max a hand. Max, of course, does not need help climbing on to the back of a truck, but she obliges because chivalry is sweet and Chloe would probably pout if she didn’t. 

“Well,” She says, taking Chloe’s hand for the second time and hauling herself up. Her muscles tense and shift with an easy motion, warm and loose from the heat of the shower. “As they say, _mi casa es su casa._ ” 

“Max… dude… I’m sorry but that joke is weak as hell. I don’t even think I can give you a pity laugh for that.” Chloe frowns as she sits down on the blankets, Max settling next to her. “Three out of five stars.” 

“Three is actually a pretty good score.” Max hums as she eases in close. Their hands touch. “Sixty percent, that’s a passing grade.”

“That’s just ‘cause I like you.” Their knees touch.

“Bonus points for sleeping with the teacher?” Their thighs touch.

“Something like that.” 

Max wonders what would happen if they just keep touching. 

The silence stretches over them, gentle and easy. Max picks at the fraying edge of a blanket, idly thinking about the motel they stayed at ages ago. She feels a little cold, wet hair clinging to the back of her nape. 

After a moment of stillness she asks, “I’m guessing you want to sleep out here tonight?” 

Chloe turns, blinks away the far off gaze she always seems to get when she’s left alone in her head for too long. Beyond them, the skyline is a rose quartz pink; black tips of cedar and pine frame the open expanse of the sky, streaks of timid blue clouds cutting along the edges. 

“Uh, yeah.” Chloe says, very eloquently as she comes back to herself. “I was thinking we could stargaze tonight. Looks like clear skies. But—” She backpedals quickly. “We can wrestle with the tent if you want. There’s still plenty of light out. I—”

“No.” Max quietly interjects. “No, I’d like this better. Though are you sure we won’t get cold?” 

“It was like, seventy today, Max.” Chloe shuffles. “Besides, I layered the blankets.”

“It’s _October_ , Chloe. And we’re in the mountains—higher elevation.”

Chloe snorts. “You know Caulfield, if you want to cuddle all you have to do is ask.” 

Max inhales like she’s ready to argue but then she stops. Blinks. 

“Okay.” Max says, simple because that’s all it needs to be. 

She looks at Chloe through her eyelashes, pressing a fraction of an inch closer before she stands and leaves to go brush her teeth.

* * *

The stars are brilliant. Hundreds of thousands of them. Millions and billions. Trillions of tiny little shards, flickering so far away in the cosmos that some of them have probably been dead for millennia. They’re ghosts. Memory burns. Pieces of the past left quietly observing the present. 

Max feels very small, marvels at her insignificance. Above her there is only sky, endlessly vast, glowing, ever expanding. The gaping mouth of the universe, unhinged and swallowing their tiny little planet whole. 

There can never be enough sky, Max thinks, enamoured—in awe. There’s always enough sadness, she thinks, but never enough sky. 

Beside her, Chloe shifts. Probably a little sleepy, definitely a little high. Max thinks she might be a bit high, too; took a puff of Chloe’s joint and coughed it back up over an hour ago, but everything around her has an odd fuzziness to it. Like the edges have been softened. 

Max sighs, blinks slow and easy as a meteorite dashes across the sky, burning up bright in the earth’s atmosphere. Beside her, Chloe shifts again like she’s trying to burrow deeper into the blankets. It’s not particularly distracting—not now, not underneath the pressing weight of the stars and the sky, but Max still reaches a single finger out and runs it along the rough edges of Chloe’s knuckles. Placating. 

Their skin catches, briefly, and Max trails a hand higher. Feels the goosebumps lining Chloe’s arm, some peach fuzz, a few scars. Max is mapping her body like the constellations through touch alone until finally her hand slides up and rests along the bony slope of Chloe’s neck. Max cups her nape, idly scratches the short little hairs there before settling, heavy and warm. A reassuring weight. 

And just like that, the stillness resumes. Neither of them say anything. The stars, unnoticing, blink diamonds above head. 

Eventually Chloe’s hand jostles the blankets, subtly reaching, touching. It settles on Max’s thigh. Max doesn’t register it at first—she’s busy floating up somewhere near Ursa Minor—but when the feeling does register she isn’t surprised. 

Under the blankets, the tip of Chloe’s fingernail traces a single straight line down the outside of Max’s thigh. It’s gentle, shy almost—which is such a strange word to use to describe _Chloe_ of all people, but it’s true. The touch is nothing like Chloe’s typical brashness; it skims the surface rather than plunging in deep, light enough and unobtrusive that they could both play it off as accidental if they wanted. But that’s not what Max wants. 

She opens her thighs wider, feels the heat flare low in her stomach when one finger becomes two, then three. The ghost of a touch pressing firmer, growing bolder.

Max wants more. She doesn’t say this. She wants more; opens her thighs until the muscle begins to strain, feels Chloe’s hand curve to the inside of her thigh. The warmth starts to spread low, slow, deep at the base of Max’s stomach. Like the steady heating of a stove coil before it begins to glow, bright hot. 

Chloe’s hand keeps petting, touching. Along the curves of muscle and fat, up the sensitive, ticklish crease between hip and thigh. Max doesn’t look away from the brilliant sky above and neither does Chloe, but eventually Max’s hand sneak under the blankets.

She folds her hand over Chloe’s, directs it to her core, and moves it with an easy rocking motion. Up, down, in, out, like the tides of their twin breathing. Max wonders if Chloe can feel the ridge of her clit through the layers of her pyjamas and underwear.

Chloe swallows audibly and Max’s cheeks prickle with a creeping heat as she feels herself getting wet, slick, the thin fabric of her underwear rubbing against the folds of her cunt. She presses Chloe’s fingers down, stretches her legs wider and stares up at the stars. 

Chloe doesn’t say anything and neither does she. Above them, a single cloud passes over the moon but all the little stars and planets continue to shine. The sky, ever expanding, ever vast, stretches onwards past the very edge of it all.

* * *

Snow Camp Fire Lookout was founded in 1910. 

At the time, it consisted of only an oilskin tent and an Osbourne Firefinder mounted at its peak, staffed periodically throughout the summers of the early 1910’s as a method of early fire detection. By 1924, a cabin was erected with sheer glass windows in place of walls. It balanced on four wooden stilts, each one eight feet tall.

Throughout World War II, Snow Camp, along with many other fire lookouts in the area, served as an Aircraft Warning System (AWS). It was manned around the clock through 1942 to ‘43 and played a critical role in the early detection of enemy aircrafts before a time of global positioning systems or radar. 

In 1952, Meryl Grenwich fell to her death from the east side cliff face of Snow Camp Lookout. A sheer vertical drop, fifty-three feet, that unfortunately did not kill her instantly but instead only began the countdown to her finals moments. 

Her husband, Jack Grenwich, had been working with her at the time. He noticed her absence roughly an hour after her initial fall and soon found Meryl, his spouse of thirty-two years, the only woman he feared he had ever loved, at the bottom of the cliff face. 

At the time, she was still alive but terribly wounded. Both of her femurs were broken; her left tibia and fibula as well. Not to mention a number of the small, delicate bones with unsuitably long names in her hands and feet. She would have been in unfathomable pain for a number of hours had her neck not been bent at a strange angle from the initial impact of her fall. 

As it were, Meryl Grenwich was not in any pain at all. She did not feel a single thing. 

By the time the sun had begun its slow descent, the once beautiful (but now treacherous, _treasonous_ , for Meryl’s fall had begun to feel like a betrayal) mountains were painted by the dying light in varying shades of blue. 

Jack Grenwich had finally managed to climb down to where the horrific entanglement of his wife’s body lay. Though he could get to the bottom of the cliff, Jack Grenwich could not climb back up to the top while carrying one hundred and forty-five pounds of dead weight. He tried to make his wife as comfortable as he could (though there was no feeling that could be as blissful for Meryl, at the time, as the complete absence of any feeling at all) and ascended with an I love you, I love you, Meryl, I love you, and the promise to return.

Of course, Meryl had passed by the next morning. Her death, unfortunately, was never documented in the history books—a silent homage to the forest rangers lost in the tides of time. Or perhaps it was documented, but viewed as an unsightly blemish by Oregon Tourism and politely forgotten in the back of a dusty filing cabinet. It may never be known if anyone but Jack Grenwich knew or cared about Meryl Grenwich’s death, as this too was lost to the tides of time. 

In the end, after all, nothing ever truly remains.

After Meryl’s death, Jack Grenwich stayed on the mountain until the end of the ‘52 fire season. There was no one to come and relieve him of his position, and the Grenwichs’ alone had been living as seasonal lookout observers on top of Snow Camp Mountain for a number of decades prior to the incident.

Jack Grenwich took to covering Meryl’s body with stones soon after her death. He could not bare the thought of the animals, the scavengers, the beautiful and mysterious creatures they had once loved to watch together as a couple, dragging his wife’s body across the gravel and stone. To them, she was just meat. But to him, she was his world. 

After Meryl’s death, Jack Grenwich did not sleep. Though he continued to perform his job as a lookout observer dutifully and silently, at the end of the day, alone in that small cabin, Jack Grenwich could not rest. Each night was plagued with a single, terrible dream: Meryl, years younger—perhaps twenty years old, the age they first met—all dressed in white. In life, she had always disliked the colour, but in this dream, she stood in the doorway of their old bedroom in a long white gown. When Jack Grenwich reached out to touch or hug or kiss his beloved wife, the door swung shut.

This same dream reoccurred for days, months— _years_ —after Meryl Grenwich’s death. Every night Jack saw Meryl, all dressed in white, just on the other side of that door. He went back to that mountain each year since that awful summer in ‘52. He himself passed of heart failure in ‘68. 

No one could ever say if Jack Grenwich saw Meryl the day he died. If she was there, years younger, all dressed in white and standing at the doorway of his deathbed.

Still, every summer since 1952 Jack Grenwich slept just a few feet from where his and Meryl’s lives had veered completely off track from a single, silly slip. This occurrence, too, was never documented in the history books. 

Another memory, another person, another life, lives, another, another, another—all lost to those restlessly shifting tides we call time.

Many years later, Max and Chloe made their ascent to Snow Camp Lookout under the cover of the cool October breeze. 

The moonlight comes and goes, flickering across the mountainscape as night clouds pass overhead. Everything is a swath of black, blue—makes Max think of a darkroom using a blue bulb instead of red. Even the small, dying daisies that line their path glow a strange cerulean colour instead of a traditional white. Max readjusts the strap of her backpack, idly wishes she could stop and take a photo. Still, they continue onwards. The daisies bob their heads in the blue autumn breeze.

Max and Chloe arrive at the summit of the shale and stone hiking path just as the sun begins to glow along the horizon, lighting up the tiny cabin on its peak. The sky is dreamy shades of pink and gold bleeding into the mountain slope.

Chloe’s familiar with the area; been here once or twice with William a lifetime ago. She swears that the lookout gets closed for the winter this time of year and while Max is skeptical at first, she feels reassured when they arrive to boarded up windows and a padlocked door.

They smash the lock with a chunk of shale plucked from their feet. A small, tiny part of Max feels bad about it, but then the moment passes and they step past the twisted metal of the padlock laying shattered on the ground.

Max holds her breath as the first rays of light cascade over the mountain top. The lookout door creaks open.

* * *

35\. Loss is a kind of absence and absence is invisible. |  **T F**  
---|---  
  
* * *

They sleep through the day and well into the next night. While Max finds herself waking up periodically, fussy from the altitude, Chloe sleeps still as stone despite Max’s constant turning on their shared twin cot. (At one point, as the sun begins to set for the next day, Max finds herself counting Chloe’s breaths. Just in case. Just to be sure.)

Eventually they both rise to eat a hearty meal of leftover takeout around a bonfire. By now the sun has long set and the moon begins its arc, in slowed motions, overhead. 

Under the cover of darkness they reminisce. There’s something about the moonlight that gives way to nostalgia. It’s a secret time, Max thinks, where words don’t mean as much. It’s harder to feel vulnerable when you can’t quite see what you’re putting out in the open.

They talk about childhood and Rachel and Max’s parents, too. Bongo and Two Whales and time spent in Seattle. Neither of them directly mention Arcadia—careful not to bring up people like Warren or Joyce. Those wounds are still far too fresh; touch them too much and they might become necrotic. 

So instead they ignore the weight and pretend that up here they are free. That up here, on the mountaintop, they are untethered from it all. They sleep when they want, wake when they need. Spend the next two days just exploring the area, walking the trails and hauling fresh water. 

It’s beautiful up here. Crisp and pristine. Picturesque vistas and scenery that looks like it belongs on the back of postcards and not at the foot of their door. Max could get lost in the fantasy that she’s been living here for years, not just some stranger passing through. She knows they’re leaving tomorrow but for now Max enjoys it, walking along the mountain’s edge and picking wild plants.

On one end of the cliff face, at the edge of Snow Camp Lookout, there is a strange pile of rocks—each one placed on top of the other in a vaguely rectangular shape. Had Max not been distracted by the sight of Chloe laughing in the breeze, she might have noticed that these rocks at the base of the overhang were placed there with an inordinate amount of care. Arranged neatly, with love, despite the decades of weathering that had eroded them away. 

As it were, Max did not notice the rocks. She did not notice anything at all except the light striking through Chloe’s hair and Chloe’s laugh, brash as two cymbals, ringing out over the mountain tops. The beautiful scenery and her nape, growing sweaty under the midday sun.

And so the two of them pass, ever oblivious to the intricate arrangement at the bottom of the cliff. 

That night they sit by the fire, breaths fogging the air. Chloe sits on the pine-needled ground, back pressed between Max’s thighs. She talks with her head tilted back, grinning up at Max with bright, almond-shaped eyes. Her cheeks are flushed—maybe from the cold or the heat or Max’s fingers as they trace up the back of her neck and card through her hair.

They drink hot cider from apple juice squeezed out of children’s juice cartons and spike it with enough whiskey that the whole mountainside tilts a little to the left. It lands a low punch to Max’s gut—makes her feel warm, fuzzy. The same way she gets when Chloe is touchy and affectionate, running her hands up the seam of Max’s jeans as she talks about memories from a lifetime ago. 

Max is well on her way past tipsy by the time the fire has burnt itself out; bright red embers popping in the greying coals. She sets her cup down, warm metal engraved with _J.G._ , and stands herself up. All the muscles in her thighs stretch in unison. 

When the world spins, Max goes with it. She pulls Chloe up with her and they stumble, giggling, hand in hand as they trip over shale and rocks, back to the black glass lookout.

Max drags Chloe into the bed with her and Chloe goes, easy and loose, swaying with the motion. She grins. They press together, face to face, nose to nose, breaths sticky like apple juice, and something bright blooms inside of Max. Turn out the lights and dim the stars: all Max wants to see is Chloe. 

When their lips touch it’s sloppy, sticky, tastes like sweet whiskey and Max can’t stop thinking about how lucky she is. How grateful she is to be here, now. 

Thank you, she thinks. Thank you. Love you, missed you, thank you.

They kiss and kiss and then Chloe is straddling her, still kissing her. The sound of zipper teeth pulling apart Chloe’s jeans makes all the heat and blood rush to Max’s cheeks. Bright red. Virgin red. Max leans back on her elbows as Chloe pulls her shirt off and the sight of her is undoubtedly a religious experience. 

And then the pants come off. And the underwear, too. Chloe leans down to kiss her as she crawls out of the fabric pooled at her feet. A silly part of Max is almost surprised that Chloe’s hair down there isn’t blue. She means to say something, crack a joke or maybe even call Chloe _beautiful_ , but she doesn’t have much time to think about it before Chloe is leaning up and closing in. Presses her hips to Max’s face. 

Chloe sighs, all soft and easy. Combs a hand through Max’s hair. Max finds the weight to be comforting—likes having Chloe’s body boxing her in. When she runs her hands up Chloe’s thighs she feels the muscle shake, pulls Chloe in closer so she can feel the shiver in her core. 

Chloe gasps when Max sticks her tongue out and licks a stripe along her folds. Her body sways, hot and electric, a little drunk, and Max does it again. And again. Wants to hear every noise Chloe can make.

The novelty of it is so strange at first. The taste, the smell. It’s not quite what Max was expecting but she finds she doesn’t mind. Likes the heat and the texture, the way her tongue slips around the skin. She presses deeper. Chloe knots a hand in her hair. 

They spend the night like that—Chloe bucking against Max’s face and Max thinking that maybe, just maybe she’d like to fall asleep between Chloe’s thighs. Gets Chloe to come once, twice, feels good to have her so lax and pliable between the palms of her hands. 

They shift, trade positions; their limbs tangle in bedsheets and their knees kick out and their foreheads bump and oh, sorry. Oops. Sorry. Still haven’t quite figured out how their bodies fit into this equation. 

Max comes with three of Chloe’s fingers twisting inside of her, groaning into the meat of Chloe’s shoulder as she blinks away the tears. Chloe, moving with the kind of confidence that comes from years of experience, crooks her fingers and presses, presses. Max’s eyelashes flutter.

* * *

By early morning, Max had fallen asleep feeling nothing at all. Not tired or happy or sad or satiated. She did not feel a single thing—a complete state of blankness, comparable to a placid lake or a sheet of glass. An absence, perhaps, but not the kind that demanded attention. 

She’d slept with Chloe’s arm draped around her shoulders warm, almost too hot, underneath the downy quilt. And she dreamt, that night, of her old dorm room at Blackwell. 

It was the same as she’d left it: untouched by the storm or the tragedies or the lingering weight that death leaves behind. It was all the same, frozen in time. Bed unmade but not quite messy, polaroids strung up on the walls. 

And there, in her doorway, stood Chloe all dressed in white. 

There was a strange ethereal air to her. Sempiternal. Untouched, much like Max’s room, to the shifting tides of time. 

When Max reached out—fingers stretched through the air to touch, to hold—the door slipped shut.

* * *

36\. Grief can eat things alive.  |  **T F**  
---|---  
37\. Grief can grow teeth. |  **T F**  
38\. At night she stays awake and thinks, _Lay me out under the hot gold sun. Let the hawks pick me clean so that maybe I can feel weightless again._ |  **T F**  
39\. _I don’t want to be like this anymore._ |  **T F**  
  
* * *

The first crack of lightning happens over interstate 101.

Flashing zigzags of light cutting across the horizon, as if the sky was cracking open. The rain comes after—first a drizzle and then a downpour. Chloe swerves, curses as the tires of her truck start to lose traction on the slick black tar of the highway. Her window wipers can’t keep up with the onslaught of rain and she leans in as close to the windshield as she can, trying the steer with her chest practically over top of the wheel. 

It’s Max who convinces her to pull over, out of fear the road will twist while they keep on driving straight. Chloe slows down, flashes her warning lights, and pulls off on the gravel shoulder of the highway. 

They sit in silence, the rain thundering down and drenching the car in grey. Their breaths, steady and silent under the downpour, slowly fog the windows. It’s Max who breaks the silence.

“Are we going to talk about it?” She asks, turning to look at Chloe.

Chloe, at first, says nothing. The rain is loud enough that both of them can pretend that Max’s words were lost in the storm, an easy way out, but that’s not what Max wants. She worries her lip, skin swelling, and opens her mouth to try and work up the courage to ask again when Chloe finally replies.

“Talk about what, Max.” She speaks to the ceiling, the crown of her head pressed back against the headrest. A white whip of lightning cracks across the Oregon sky, trailed by thunder. “About how we fucked?” Chloe asks. “Is that what’s bugging you?” 

“No. I mean—not really, no… that’s not it.”

“Then what, Max.” She sounds so tired. Looks exhausted. Bone deep fatigue that makes her seem like she’s lived through centuries. 

“I just think we should talk.” Max chooses her words carefully. “Don’t you?”

“About _what_?” Chloe challenges and Max frowns. “What part of—” Chloe waves her hand in a vague gesture. “—Of _this_ do you want to talk about?” Her hand slams back down on the wheel, gripping it. “Arcadia? Jefferson? About how my mom and step-dad are dead and we’re the only fucking people left?” Max’s frown etches deeper. Chloe’s voice grows louder. “How far do you want to go back? Do you want to talk about Rachel? About my dad? Do you want to talk about how you fucking _left_ me?”

“Jesus, _Chloe—_ ”

—But Chloe’s fuse detonates. She explodes. “What is _up_ with you, Max? How are you so fucking—so fucking chill about all of this? How are you so okay? Is there something I’m not seeing? Something I’m missing?”

Max’s eyebrows knit, feels herself getting angry too but she steadies herself. “I’m not okay.” Max says and her voice does not crack. “Of course I’m not fucking okay, Chloe. I mean Jesus, my hands haven’t stopped shaking since we left Arcadia. I just…” She exhales, pushes her bangs from her balmy forehead. There’s a tremor in her hands, as if to prove the point. “I just process these things differently than you do.”

Anger, grief—they both suddenly flash inside of her, bright and brilliant as a streak of lightning. 

“I mean fuck, Chloe, do you really think this is easy for me? I had to let hundreds— _thousands_ of people die and I don’t regret it, or…” Max scrubs her face. “I do regret it, I do, I would do anything to trade places with Joyce or David or Warren or _Kate_ , but… you’re here. And I’m here. And nothing is going to change that.”

Chloe stares at her, thin eyebrows furrowed. She looks like she’s going to cry and Max thinks she might too, but grinds her teeth and swallows it down. Eats her feelings. 

The moment ticks on and Chloe, oddly, doesn’t say anything. Keeps her eyes fixed on the road, knuckles white as she grips the steering wheel. Then she says, “Should we even be doing this?” The words are all gravelly and raw as an open wound. 

Max speaks very slowly. “What part… of _this_ do you mean?” 

“This!” Chloe waves her hands. “All of this! I mean like, I shouldn’t even _be_ here. _You_ shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be doing _this_ together!”

“Chloe…” Max breathes. A strange part of herself feels like she’s being broken up with, even though there’s nothing Chloe can break between them. Nothing between the two of them that she can pluck off and push away. “I don’t think I understand what you’re saying.”

“I’m saying that this is a fucking mess.” And, well, Max can’t deny that. “Like… even though you’re here now, one day you’re going to be gone and I’m going to be alone so why are we even doing this in the first place? Why don’t we just rip the fucking bandaid off instead of pretending like this isn’t all going to come down on our fucking heads?”

Max squints, trying to wrap her head around Chloe’s reasoning. “Is that what you think?” She says. “That… this,” Max waves her hands vaguely. “Is all temporary?” 

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, Max. Fuck. Because one day you’re going to be gone and I’m going to be alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Chloe.” Max places her hand on top of Chloe’s but Chloe yanks hers away.

“Yes, you are! You can’t say that!” She’s practically yelling now, voice steadily growing louder. More monstrous. The rain shakes the roof of the truck. “You could die or find someone else—go shack up with someone like Warren. And then I’ll be all alone.”

“Chloe.” Max says, harsher this time, feels a little hurt. She holds Chloe’s hands, tight, refuses to let go. “I’m not going anywhere. Don’t you get that?” The rain does not relent. “I tore apart space and time for you. Everything I did was for you, Chloe. And it’s not that you like, owe me anything but... I’m not going anywhere.”

Chloe’s crying now, eyes glassy and red. “I don’t believe you.” She says and Max feels a tiny sliver of her heart cut loose and curl away. “Everyone always fucking leaves me, Max. I’m always alone.”

And all Max can do is hold her while she cries. The storm blankets the road, shakes the entire car but nothing rocks Max the same way Chloe does as she sobs against her. 

“You’re not alone, you’re not alone,” Max keeps saying, holds her close and hopes that Chloe isn’t just latching on to the very last word, _alone alone alone—_

Outside the rain continues to pour, but inside of Chloe’s truck, on the shoulder of an Oregon highway, space and time have stilled. As if the whole universe has shrunk to be only Max and Chloe and this single moment. Chloe just cries and cries and hasn’t stopped crying for the past five years. 

Max cracks into a thousand tiny pieces. Hairline fractures. Chloe’s hands tangle in the fraying fabric of Max’s sweater, tear stains on the cotton. They don’t talk, just listening to the sound of rain pelting the metal roof.

Eventually the storm begins to pass, taking Chloe’s sobbing with it. She quiets into hiccups but soon it all goes silent. Nothing but the sound of thunder drumming in the distance.

“Are you okay?” Max says as Chloe pulls away. 

She rubs her eyes, looking distant and almost nauseous. Turns away to hide the patchy redness of her cheeks. “Yeah.” She says. And then, “I’m sorry. Fuck—I…” Exhale. “I was being a real fucking asshole.”

“Yeah, you were.” Max says, very evenly. “Honestly, that kind of hurt, Chloe. But…” Max breathes. “I understand. It’s hard.”

“I’m sorry.” Chloe says again. Her voice is a little nasally and tear tracks gleam, bright and prominent across her cheeks. She crumbs at her eyes “I shouldn’t have said a lot of that. You don’t deserve to be treated like shit.” 

Max shrugs because somehow that’s easier than admitting just how bad it stung. “You were emotional.” She says, “It’s hard, Chloe. It’s never not going to be. But,” She pauses, waits for Chloe to turn and look at her so she can say what she needs to. Wants to make sure she has Chloe’s full attention. “I need you to stop bringing up Warren like he’s some— some card to be played against me.” Chloe visibly flinches and Max does not back down, takes up the room she needs to speak. Her voice cracks a little. “I’m serious Chloe, that really hurt. You can’t do that. You know he was my friend. You _know_ he meant a lot to me.”

“I know. I just get… emotional.” She says. “Jealous.” The word sounds tight and uncomfortable. 

“I know.” Max says and Chloe reaches for her hand. “But you’re the only one.” Chloe squeezes and Max squeezes back. “You’re the only one.”

Above them, the lightning paints stripes through the sky.

* * *

**Fill in the blank.**

40\. Chloe Price’s greatest loss has been _______. ( _1 point_ )

41\. Max Caulfield’s attachment style is best described as _______. ( _1 point_ )

* * *

Max bids goodbye to her parents and hangs up the telephone on the shiny, silver prongs jutting from the booth. 

A handful of change is spat out as the receiver goes dead and Max collects it carefully, one coin at a time. Pockets a dollar forty-five with a jingle in her steps. She exits the booth. The door slips shut and there’s Chloe, waiting for her with a cigarette dangling from between her teeth. 

Max’s mother’s voice rings in her head, echoing and soulful. She speaks tender in a way only mothers can be. _Come home,_ she’d said. Come home. For what? What is there for Max that she doesn’t have right now? What is a home for her without Chloe? 

Home is laying in the bed of Chloe’s ‘85 Ford, interstate lights flickering overhead while Chloe drives down the tarmac going 120. Home is waking up in a frosted tent, teeth chattering and sleepy-eyed as Chloe reaches out and pulls Max to her chest. Home is holding Chloe’s hand as they stand in goldenrod lining a wide open field; the stars, like rain, falling and falling and _falling—_

Max isn’t at home with herself. She isn’t at home with her parents, or Seattle, or the empty space they used to call Arcadia Bay. She’s at home with Chloe. Chloe. Always Chloe. Never not Chloe. Chloe, Chloe, Chloe. It’s almost boggling how often Max thinks about her; how every thought, every line of sight always draw back to the same, single person. The body that has become Max’s entire solar system—caught in Chloe’s orbit. 

Gravitational pull. Inertia. Sometimes Max feels like she’s spinning out of control because of Chloe and sometimes she feels like she can’t stay stable without her. She is her sun, her moon—a silly, emotional part of Max could spend her days waxing poetics about Chloe, but writing has never been her thing. No poetry or prose so instead she documents. Photographs. Little pieces of time. 

Snapshot one: Chloe in the morning, all sleepy-eyed and lazy. The clear slope of her breasts and her legs tilted open, inviting, all spread out along the lines in the sheets. Snapshot two: Chloe laying on an old cracked roadway, hair fanning out. Blue on black and a hot autumn day. 

(In that one her gaze is absent. Gone. The way she tends to float away sometimes, off somewhere in her head and leaving Max behind. Max remembers that day, nervously scanning the horizon for any approaching cars and Chloe, motionless, in the middle of the road. Teasing death because maybe it helps her feel a little more alive.)

Now Chloe is safely tucked away on the shoulder of the road, out of harm's way. She’s alert, pushing herself off the side of the truck as Max looks both ways and crosses the street to meet her. They link hands and together they walk around to the other side of the truck, looking out past the cliff side. Below them: only sea. 

The wind careens off of the cliff face and runs through their hair, foreheads bright and shiny as strands blow out in all directions. Max lets go of Chloe’s hand for a moment to reach into her bag. Raises her camera and clicks the shutter. 

Snapshot three: Chloe staring out at the endless expanse of ocean, framed in halos of light. Behind her the black road runs zigzags past the horizon, out of sight, and from this angle all the white markings along the highway point back to Chloe. 

Solid straight lines, guiding Max home. 

They don’t talk, just standing there staring out past the cliff’s edge. Just Max and Chloe and the sound of the wind blowing over the sea.

Eventually minutes pass. Hours. The sun begins to set and it’s an oddly cruel reminder that Max can no longer rewind to live in these kinds of moments forever. Still, the light is warm. Paints the landscape in shades of yellow and filters through the trees. Midas gold.

Chloe, in time, begins to stir. Seems to make her mind up about something. 

“Let’s keep going.” She says. Decides; maybe even pleads. “Let’s just— let’s just keep driving. Let’s see how far we can go.” Her eyes have gone foggy, glazed over like her mind is a million miles away. Swept out and lost at sea. “I’m not ready to go back yet.”

Max doesn’t blink. Doesn’t protest—she knows she feels the exact same way.

“Okay.” Max says very evenly. 

She takes Chloe’s hand. 

“Okay.”

* * *

**Short answer questions. Identify and explain the following:** ( _5 points each_ )

50\. Out here, along the horizon, the sea and sky fade together into a hollowed out grey. Quiet and tired and bleak with the promise of rain. If Max squints, she can pretend they flow seamlessly into each other, grey to grey. A gradient, a continuum. No boundaries to hold between two impossibly immense things. 

51\. Here and now, Max stands at the edge of this grey sea and wishes she could shape herself a new heart from the salt and the sand. Fill up this strangeness in her chest with beach pebbles and all the cochlear seashells so that maybe, maybe she can turn this space into something concrete. Something with shape and form so that grief does not fester like an open wound—aching and sore and bleeding and

52\. Some days she is the tide and some days she is the smooth grey stones, slipping below the surface. These days she is both: a dead girl walking. One minute Max is choking on seawater and the next a pit has opened inside of her and swallowed it whole. The body is not meant to contain such dichotomy, and yet emptiness and suffocation are both the same in the mind of grief. 

53\. Lately it is getting harder and harder to see beauty anymore. It’s like the world has washed out, every colour turns to grayscale. Monochrome. Lost in the tides and slowly fading out to black; swallowed by the ocean. Max knows that beauty exists—has seen it before. But like an object hidden from view, once it is out of sight it’s hard to remember it is still there. 

54\. But whatever the case, even if she never sees it again, Max knows she will do anything within her power to show Chloe it still exists.

**Author's Note:**

>  _who is ever at home in oneself._  
>  _land without mercy. interstates_  
>  _set flickering by night. when i speak to you_  
>  _i can feel a storm falling blackly to the roads,_  
>  _the pelting rains the instant they_  
>  _hit. devotion is full of arrows._  
>  _most weeks i am no more than the color of the walls_  
>  _in the room where we sit, or i am blind to clocks,_  
>  _restless, off-guard, accomplice to the weathers_  
>  _that burn and flee, formless, across a sky_  
>  _that was my past, that is_  
>  _what i was. i am always too close._  
>  _i am not sure i will ever be_  
>  _wholly alive._  
>    
> on kingdoms by joanna klink
> 
> [\+ tumblr](https://angiogenic.tumblr.com)


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